Quote

Among provocatives, the next best thing to good preaching is bad preaching. I have even more thoughts during or enduring it than at other times.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Ralph Waldo Emerson
Age: 78 †
Born: 1803
Born: May 25
Died: 1882
Died: April 27
Biographer
Diarist
Essayist
Philosopher
Poet
Writer
Boston
Massachusetts
R. W. Emerson
Waldo Emerson
Good
Among
Thoughts
Times
Language
Next
Enduring
Best
Preaching
Even
Endure
Thing
Communication

More quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Our distrust is very expensive.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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I know nothing which life has to offer so satisfying as the profound good understanding, which can subsist, after much exchange ofgood offices, between two virtuous men, each of whom is sure of himself, and sure of his friend. It is a happiness which postpones all other gratifications, and makes politics, and commerce, and churches, cheap.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Look sharply after your own thoughts. They come unlooked for, like a new bird seen on your trees, and, if you turn to your usual task, disappear and you shall never find that perception again never, I say-but perhaps years, ages, and I know not what events and worlds my lie between you and its return.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Our statute is a currency which we stamp with our own portrait.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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What I need is someone who will make me do what I can.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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There is also something excellent in every audience,--the capacity of virtue. They are ready to be beatified.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Every man takes care that his neighbor shall not cheat him. But a day comes when he begins to care that he does not cheat his neighbor. Then all goes well. He has changed his market cart into a chariot of the sun.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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You are constantly invited to be what you are.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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As many languages as he has, as many friends, as many arts and trades, so many times is he a man.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Don't set out to teach theism from your natural history... You spoil both.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The pest of society are the egotist, they are dull and bright, sacred and profane, course and fine. It is a disease that like the flu falls on all constitutions.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The judge weighs the arguments and puts a brave face on the matter, and since there must be a decision, decides as he can, and hopes he has done justice and given satisfaction to the community
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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But in every constitution some large degree of animal vigor is necessary as material foundation for the higher qualities of the art.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Our admiration of the antique is not admiration of the old, but of the natural.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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There are men whose manners have the same essential splendor as the simple and awful sculpture on the friezes of the Parthenon, and the remains of the earliest Greek art.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The shows of the day, the dewy morning, the rainbow, mountains, orchards in blossom, stars, moonlight, shadows in still water, andthe like, if too eagerly hunted, become shows merely, and mock us with their unreality.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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A man is the whole encyclopedia of facts. The creation of a thousand forests is in one acorn, and Egypt, Greece, Rome, Gaul, Britain, America, lie folded already in the first man.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The pulpit and the press have many commonplaces denouncing the thirst for wealth, but if men should take these moralists at their word, and leave off aiming to be rich, the moralists would rush to rekindle at all hazards this love of power in the people, lest civilization should be undone.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The Gods we worship write their names on our faces be sure of that. And a man will worship something ... That which dominates will determine his life and character. Therefore it behooves us to be careful what we worship, for what we are worshipping we are becoming.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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We are not free to use today, or to promise tomorrow, because we are already mortgaged to yesterday.
Ralph Waldo Emerson